1. PSYC 206
Lifespan Development
Bilge Yagmurlu

2. The Power of Language
Language is a symbolic system of enormous scope and power.
It permits the expression of abstract ideas, desires, and emotions, and is one of the most significant means of preserving and passing on, and even challenging and transforming, a culture’s knowledge, values, and beliefs. 2

3. The Power of Language Lexical Approach
All important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language
Synonym Frequency 3

4. 4

5. Language Development Secondary intersubjectivity
Communication about objects and events that are the focus of joint attention
Vocabulary spurt and myelination of language-related regions. 5 5

6. Brain Structures and Processes
Broca’s Area
An area on the left frontal lobe of the brain
Wernicke’s Area
An area of the brain that when damaged 6

7. Brain Structures and Processes
Lesions
Impact on language processing: Normal or near-normal development is observed if damage occurs early life (e.g., stroke cutting off the blood supply).
Plasticity 7

8. Environmental Key to Language
Language Deprived Environments
E.g., children in Romanian orphanages
Deaf children with parents communicating in sign language
vs.
Deaf children with parents not communicating in sign language
Hearing children reared by deaf parents 8

9. Environmental Key to Language
Home sign:
The opportunity to communicate enables basic features of language but does not lead to complex language abilities. 9

10. Basic Domains of Language Acquisition
Phonological development
Semantic development
Grammar development
Pragmatic development

11. Phonological Development
The process of learning how to segment strings of speech sounds into meaningful units.
Phoneme: sounds that differ and make a difference in meaning in a particular language
Minimal pairs: pat vs. bat; /p/ and /b/ as two phonemes
Examples in Turkish: yar vs. kar; al vs. Ar

12. Semantic Development Semantic development:
The process of learning the meanings of words and word combinations, by identifying the word’s referent.
Components:
Receptive and expressive vocabulary

13. Semantic Development Vocabulary development: growth spurt in new words
Fast mapping

14. Grammar Development Definition of grammar development:
The process of learning the rules of a particular language for sequencing words in a sentence, and word parts within words.
Syntactic bootstrapping: use of knowledge of grammar to figure out the meaning of new words

15. Grammar Development Syntactic bootstrapping:
7 months: Sensitive to ordering of words in simple sentences and can abstract patterns of word usage from such sentences
around 2 years
Helps figure out whether the new word is noun or verb etc. 15

16. Pragmatic Development
Definition of pragmatic development:
The process of learning the social and cultural conventions that govern how language is used in particular contexts.
Functions:
To use context and social cues to interpret communications

17. Pragmatic Development
Children with autism tend to have problems with pragmatics.
Without a good understanding of the pragmatics, children will miss a huge part of communication and have a large amount of trouble learning to express feelings and thoughts. 17

18. Pragmatic Development
Referential communication
being able to package the info in a way that takes into account the perceptual and informational status of the listener
shows development throughout preschool ages
related to children´s developing theory of mind 18

19. Keys to Language Two keys to the world of language
Normal human biological structures and processes
Active participation in language-using community
With these two keys, young children enter a symbolic universe that is distinctively human.

20. Explanation of Language Acquisition
Three distinctive approaches
Biological
Social and Cultural
Cognitive

21. Biological Explanations
Perspective: Our brains are hard wired to learn language. Biologically programmed sensitivity to language is present at birth, which develops as the child matures
Noam Chomsky’s theory: heredity, innate ability
Development is triggerred via Language Acquisition Device (LAD). We are programmed to recognize the deep structures that underlie any particular language that we may hear.

22. Social and Cultural Explanations
Perspective: emphasizes the role of environment
Social interactions: children acquire language in the process of using language.
Bruner’s Language Acquisition Support System (LASS): behaviors and formatted events within which children acquire language. Also Tomasello…
Environmental complement to LAD
Children become increasingly more successful at communicating

23. Cognitive Approaches
Perspective: Language abilities follow from increasing ability to think and process information
E.g., Gopnik
Switch from collective monologues to true dialogs. Related to egocentrism.
Collective monologue
Regardless of age, strong association between vocabulary size, mastery of grammatical structure and the ability to express thoughts.

24. Biological Prerequisites
Chimpanzees
After years of hard work, chimpanzees can learn several dozen signs, in combinations similar to a 2-year-old; but children with no special training learn thousands of words in a relatively short time span
Down syndrome
Restricted vocabulary and simple grammar suggest that normal language development requires normal cognitive function, at least in certain key areas.

25. Role of the Environment
Deaf children whose parents won’t sign and hearing children raised by deaf parents develop basic rudiments of grammar (2- or 3-word phrases), but not more complex ones